Software applications and systems have become indispensable tools for helping consumers, i.e., users, perform a wide variety of tasks in their daily professional and personal lives. Currently, numerous types of desktop, web-based, and cloud-based software systems are available to help users perform a plethora of tasks ranging from basic computing system operations and word processing, to financial management, small business management, tax preparation, health tracking and healthcare management, as well as other personal and business endeavors, operations, and functions far too numerous to individually delineate here.
One major, if not determinative, factor in the utility, and ultimate commercial success, of a given software system of any type is the ability to implement and provide a customer support system through which a given user can obtain assistance and, in particular, get answers to questions that arise during the installation and operation of the software system. However, providing potentially millions of software system users with specialized advice and answers to their specific questions is a huge undertaking that can easily, and rapidly, become economically infeasible.
To address this problem, many providers of software systems implement or sponsor one or more question and answer customer support systems. Typically, a question and answer customer support system includes a hosted forum through which a user can direct their specific questions, typically in a text format, to a support community that often includes other users and/or professional support personal.
In many cases, once a user's specific question is answered by one or more members of the support community through the question and answer customer support system, the user's specific question, and the answer to the specific question provided by the support community, is categorized and added to a customer support question and answer database associated with the question and answer customer support system. In this way, subsequent users of the software system can access the user's specific question or topic, and find the answer to the user's question, via a search of the customer support question and answer database. As a result, a dynamic customer support question and answer database of categorized/indexed user questions and answers is made available to users of the software system through the question and answer customer support system.
The development of customer support question and answer databases has numerous advantages including a self-help element whereby a searching user, i.e., a user accessing the resulting question and answer pair, can find an answer to their particular question by simply searching the customer support question and answer database for topics, questions, and answers related to their issue. In addition, if the answer to the user's specific question is not in the customer support question and answer database, the user can then become an asking user by submitting their question to the question and answer customer support system, typically through the same web-site and/or user interface. Consequently, by using a question and answer customer support system that includes a customer support question and answer database, potentially millions of user questions can be answered in an efficient and effective manner, and with minimal duplicative effort.
Although question and answer customer support systems have information that may adequately answer a user's question, pairing a particular question or search query with the best (e.g., most relevant and/or highest quality) question and answer pair can be difficult. Various techniques have been used, but the existing techniques often times fail to satisfy the users.
What is needed is a method and system for using user-defined features in customer support content to improve content searching in a question and answer customer support system by using a crowd-machine learning hybrid predictive model, according to one embodiment.